


Dead Men Don't Bleed

by suitesamba



Series: Dead Men Don't Bleed [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Language, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is passing his days holed up in a seaside cottage working through his grief by writing a memoir of his time with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes, meanwhile, back in London, believes the obituary in the <i>Times</i> reporting that Afghanistan veteran Dr. John Watson has died. Sherlock seeks temporary refuge in his childhood vacation home – not knowing that Mycroft has gifted the little cottage on the sea to John. When the two dead men confront each other, the secrets they’ve been keeping have no place to hide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The rating in this story is for language and violence (two men fighting physically). There's a kiss as well, but it doesn't merit an M rating!

-***-

Fourteen months after consulting detective Sherlock Holmes jumped to his death from the roof of St. Bart’s, London physician John Watson, veteran of the War in Afghanistan, died a quiet death in hospital after a short battle with pancreatic cancer.

He left almost no one behind – his brother Harry, scattered cousins, a handful of friends. His death merited a short obituary in the paper. He left his body to science and instructions that there be no memorial service.

There was a brief spike in interest when the newspapers subsequently linked Dr. John Watson to the deceased – and infamous – Sherlock Holmes. 

But that soon died away too.

“Tragedy. A real tragedy. I didn’t even know he was ill,” Irene Hudson told the reporter who knocked on her door one morning. She seemed genuinely upset. “He moved out soon after Sherlock…” She looked fondly back at the dusty stairs leading to 221B. “I haven’t seen him since. And you know, Harry is his sister, not his brother….”

Later that same day, Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade looked quietly down at a stack of papers on his desk and arranged them into a neat pile.

“He was a good man,” he said, looking up at last at the reporter. “Capable. Steady. Extremely loyal. He was a great asset.” He gazed out the window, staring at the buildings across the street, then added softly. “He’ll be missed.”

-1-

In a cottage on the coast, miles and miles away from the heart of London, Dr. John Watson closed his laptop computer and stared out over the sea at the setting sun.

John was a common name, and Watson not terribly uncommon. The fact that he was not the only Dr. John Watson in the United Kingdom was not necessarily surprising. It was most unusual, however, that two Dr. John Watsons, both with a single sibling named Harry, had served in Afghanistan.

This particular Dr. Watson didn’t yet know that, back in London, he was presumed dead. He’d come here, to this childhood summer home of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, to work out his grief. His therapist had set him down this path, and had gently suggested that he leave his mobile behind, that he immerse himself in the writing of a memoir of his time with Sherlock Holmes. 

That he get his news from the locals in the town, from the newspapers available there.

That he disconnect – at least for a while.

For as long as it took.

Mycroft had given him the cottage after Sherlock died. He told John he and Sherlock had summered here for many years. Sherlock had never mentioned the cottage to John.

But then again, Sherlock hadn’t talked much about his childhood – not to John, not to anyone.

After two months here, John had written more than three hundred pages and seemed no closer to pushing through the wall of his grief than he had been when he began. 

But the words came. They poured from his fingertips. They sunk into the keyboard and appeared as meandering threads on the screen before him. They saved themselves in digital format and when he reread them, he wondered who had written them, who had generated those thoughts, who had crystallized them into paragraphs and chapters. Who pretended to know – to understand – Sherlock Holmes.

He wondered how many pages he’d have at the end. Five hundred? A thousand?

He didn’t think he could ever say all there was to say about Sherlock. After all this time, he felt he had only touched the edges. That he’d barely penetrated the skin. At times, he wondered if he was even qualified for this task. If he had ever really known Sherlock at all.

 _You need to work this out, John. So you can move on._

Work _what_ out?

_Your feelings. Your feelings for Sherlock Holmes. This obsession. This…_

She wouldn’t say it. _Obsession_ had become the code word. She looked at him expectantly. They both knew the word but it was up to him, to John, to voice it.

The little cottage held no vestiges of the child genius. It had been stripped and cleaned and sanitized and made neutral long before it became John’s cottage. But it held a certain charm in its small, cozy rooms, its sunny windows, its delightfully irregular nooks and crannies. He could imagine Sherlock here –a boy of six or seven digging in the sand, an eleven-year old tucked into a corner reading.

Sherlock, sixteen, lanky frame folded into a wooden chair on the deck facing the ocean, watching the waves roll in, watching the beachcombers passing by on summer days. Watching. Seeing. Observing. 

After a year of going about his life on autopilot, dreams locked in a fatal sequence of jumps and falls, a quiet respite just outside a seaside village was uncommonly attractive to John. 

There were no flat rooftops here. No tall buildings. No lorries. No sirens.

He’d go long hours now, sometimes even a day or two, without catching movement from the corner of his eye. Without seeing Sherlock fall.

He developed a routine he could live with. Up at seven, a run along the shore or the trail that led to the village, a shower, breakfast. Two hours working on the memoir. A brisk walk into town to pick up the day’s shopping and newspaper. A visit to the library some days to return one book and pick up another. A cuppa with old Mrs. Eddleston if she caught him. Chores around the house – cleaning and cooking and laundry. Lunch. Three more hours at the computer. A nap. A walk to the beach. Wading ankle deep in the surf.

Two months in and he was neither bored nor lonely nor stir crazy. He was starting to feel more human again, as if his body was beginning to wake up, to shake off the numbness. He noticed things now – the color of the sky and the shape of the clouds. The sound of the surf. The taste of the salty air. The color of Mrs. Eddleston’s lipstick. The pattern of the sole of the innkeeper’s shoes. He noticed the birds, and the children, and the pretty woman who sat and watched the waves as they swept the footprints off the sand.

He slept soundly, lulled to sleep by the sea air, rocked by the rhythmic pounding of the waves. After a month in the cottage, he no longer slept on the edge of awareness, facing the door, gun under his pillow.

The gun was in the bedside drawer now. Unloaded.

Trust issues.

Grief.

This _thing_ he’d had with Sherlock. Unnamable. Shapeless and formless. Tangible only when you brushed up against it too closely, testing the boundaries, never knowing exactly where they were.

He placed his hand now on the closed laptop, tempted to open it again. To once more let chaotic images and emotions coalesce into words. Two months in and he found he wasn’t painting a portrait of Sherlock Holmes – he was sculpting him, molding the shape of him from the outside in. His hand smoothed over the laptop’s surface, then he pushed it away, only an inch or two, but a clear dismissal. It was after ten. Time to end one day and begin another.

Something woke him well after midnight.

Something dropping, rolling across the tiled floor. A muttered oath. 

_Fuck._

The gun was out of the drawer and in his hand in a heartbeat. Even unloaded, it was an adequate weapon. In ten seconds he was pressed against the wall in the corridor, eyes adjusting to the darkness, tracking the nearly invisible intruder. Less than a minute later, the butt of the gun was crashing down on the back of the intruder’s neck.

John hoped his aim was true.

It was very dark in the cottage.

The element of surprise in his favor or not, the intruder didn’t fall with the blow. The man had turned and the butt of the gun hit his shoulder and not his neck. John was suddenly in a frenzied fight for control of his weapon, facing an intruder that was taller than he was, and just as strong.

Struggles turned into blows, and the gun skitted across the floor. He heard it bounce off the raised tiles surrounding the hearth just before the first blow to his face landed.

There were hands on his throat now, but his legs were free, and he bucked a knee up into the man’s groin. The pressure on his throat lessened as the man grunted in pain, but his advantage was short-lived. The intruder grabbed his left arm, so John punched with his right.

There was blood on his hand, and on his face. They were both panting now but the adrenaline was surging and John was not about to give up. 

He needed the gun. In the small space in his brain left to rational thought, he knew he should have threatened the intruder with it while he had the chance.

Broad hands on his shoulders now lifted him then slammed him back against the floor. His head hit hard, his shoulder slid back and knocked against the leg of the table. He struggled away as his assailant followed him beneath the table, scrabbling, grasping his neck and pressing two thumbs against his windpipe, constricting it.

They were completely silent save the odd noises the body made while fighting.

He was only half conscious when he kicked out in a last ditch effort to free himself. He connected with the man’s groin again. A tussle. A roll. John lashed backward and the table leg gave way.

He could think of only one thing in his oxygen-deprived state. 

His laptop computer. The memoir. Two months of work. Two months of his life.

He could hear it sliding now, his senses hyper-aware as his head swam.

He didn’t see it when it fell, but he heard it hit.

Earlier than expected, and with a softer crack. Not the tile floor, but the intruder’s head.

Base of the skull, back of the neck. A direct hit where his gun had missed.

He only determined this later, however. 

For a long, long moment, he lay there, gasping. As his head cleared, he squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing pain in his temples and army crawled toward his gun. He found it by feel, against the edge of the sofa, its cool weight home in his hand. He struggled to his feet, keeping the gun trained on the spot across the room where someone was groaning. 

“I’ve got the gun,” he said, voice weak and raspy and unrecognizable from the damage to his windpipe. “And I’m prepared to use it.” He fumbled for the light switch on the wall behind him and threw it on, blinking against the brightness but keeping the gun steady, trained on the man sprawled on the floor. He moved closer, one painful, dizzy step at a time as his head continued to throb and his vision blurred.

The man was half under the collapsed table, on his stomach, hands held over his head. Blood was oozing through his fingers. 

John moved sideways, one hand on the back of the sofa to steady himself, until he was only six feet away from the intruder. He let go of the sofa, leaning on it for balance, and held the gun with both hands.

“Your mobile. Slide your mobile out toward me. One hand. Keep the other on your head.”

One trembling hand moved slowly off the head and fumbled in the coat pocket.

“Slowly,” warned John. Fuck. He felt like he was going to faint. He just needed a telephone – that mobile – and he’d have the officer from the village out here. _Then_ he could collapse, maybe spend a day or two in hospital. 

A mobile phone slid across the floor toward him.

“Put your hand back on your head.”

He idly noted the bloody handprints on the tile floor, the bloody fingerprints on the phone.

And then…and then the man turned his head toward John.

Just a bit, a fraction.

Just enough to measure up his captor.

To see the gun. 

Just enough for John to see a single eye, a bloody nose, a swollen lip. A well-trimmed beard and moustache. Curly hair cropped very short. A tanned forehead.

“John?” 

The single eye, blue-green and bright, blinked. Stared. Widened in shock as John’s hand trembled. As he circled, keeping his distance, keeping the gun trained on his target.

“John… John!”

That voice. John’s mind was playing tricks on him. He’d hit his head. He was hallucinating.

But there was an odd exuberance in the familiar voice. A hand stretched out, palm up, in supplication, in surrender. The voice again. Weak, oddly strained. He rolled further on his side and John could see the lean, lank body. He stared at the outstretched hand. At the long, elegant fingers. 

“John… _please_ …I thought…I thought you were _dead_ ….”

John took two faltering steps closer. He blinked, tried to focus. Tried to mentally remove that incongruous beard and moustache from the face. Tried to bleach the sun-tanned skin, give it the pallor of the rain-misted London streets. 

His mind was frozen, unable to think, to process.

Wanting something did not make it so. Wishing someone back in your life did not make the dead walk again.

“How…?”

He could not form the words, could not phrase the question. He was dizzy, his head throbbing from the blow, the shock. He sat clumsily on the floor, folding his legs beneath him while he kept the gun pointed at his target, keeping his distance still, wanting to be sure, wanting to sort this impossibility out in his head before he closed his eyes and floated away.

He used his foot to scoot the mobile closer. Picked it up, swept his thumb across it, opened the contact list. The words swam before him, blurry but whole. Surprisingly few names. Names he didn’t know.

And Mycroft’s.

There could only be one Mycroft.

He didn’t recall dropping the phone, but he heard it hit the tile and bounce, magnified a thousand times like the drip of a faucet in an insomniac’s sleep-deprived brain. Didn’t recall lowering the gun but suddenly it was not in his hand. Didn’t recall rolling forward onto the floor, onto his side, hand outstretched, grasping Sherlock’s bloody fingers, squeezing them.

He did remember laughing. His laughter. Sherlock’s. Choked sounds of jubilant relief, wondrous disbelief.

He remembered worrying about shock, and wondering if he had a concussion, and if he’d broken Sherlock’s nose, and if his head needed stitching.

He found it oddly amusing that a dead man could bleed. That a laptop computer could fell a ghost.

“Pancreatic cancer,” Sherlock was mumbling, and John turned his head and stared again, and Sherlock’s lips - _Sherlock’s_ \- were moving behind that ridiculous Van Dyke. “You look like hell, John, but you certainly don’t look like a dead man.”

And John closed his eyes – just for a moment – and Sherlock was pushing himself up, trying to sit, one hand against the back of his head, looking around, _observing_. “Dead and gone and body donated to science but in our family’s seaside cottage doing…what?” His eyes strayed to the laptop on the floor, power cable still attached. “Writing?”

He was on his feet now, wobbly, standing over John, holding out his blood-covered hand.

And John took it, silent still, and let this battered ghost of Sherlock pull him to his feet, and hold him around his middle and half-drag him back to the bedroom where John fell heavily onto his bed, on his back. Sherlock sank to the floor beside the bed, pulled a pair of boxers off the bedside chair, and pressed them against the back of his head while his other hand searched under the bed. He had John’s medical kit out and was rifling through it in seconds. John heard something bounce onto the floor and roll away.

 _Painkillers. He’s looking for painkillers._

“One. Just one.” Bloody hell it hurt to talk. “Don’t knock yourself out. Need to be conscious.”

He heard him laugh, a throaty chuckle that turned into something almost painful, and felt the bed shake with it.

“God, I’ve missed you, John.”

“You’ve missed my medkit,” John muttered. He felt a stupid grin stretch his bruised and blood-streaked face. He hurt too much for this to be a dream. 

“That too.” 

Sherlock must have swallowed one of the painkillers – probably the OxyContin – then gotten to his feet, because the bed was shifting and something was blocking the overhead light.

“Can you swallow without water?”

John made a small negative motion with his head, squeezing his eyes shut at the dizziness. His throat was too raw.

“Right. Water, then.”

He pulled himself up awkwardly on the pillows against the headboard while Sherlock was out of the room. He accepted the pill and the water offered him, then fumbled through a self-assessment. His lip was split open and twice its normal size. His face hurt. And his hands. The fingers on his right hand looked like plump sausages. He touched the back of his head gingerly. 

“Get ice – all that I’ve got.” He focused on Sherlock’s face. He’d need ice for that nose – and for the head wound. “And towels.”

He didn’t remember much after that – Sherlock coming back with ice wrapped in towels packed inside plastic grocery bags. He drifted off with his head resting on an ice bag on his pillow, a niggling worry inside that he should be treating Sherlock, stitching the head wound where the laptop had probably sliced through to his skull.

But ghosts don’t bleed, he thought. Or dig under the bed for medkits and OxyContin. Ghosts visit at night and are gone in the morning. 

All in all, it was a pleasant hallucination, even with the blood.

~*~

He woke to darkness two hours later.

He was immediately aware of several things.

His pillow was wet. So wet that water was squishing around his ears. His head hurt like hell. His upper lip was swollen and painful. His right hand wouldn’t close into a fist.

His body was cold but his feet were warm.

Warm because they were pressed up against something warm and soft sprawled at the foot of the bed. 

He exhaled slowly, willing his brain to work. To connect the pieces. To remember what had happened.

_Sherlock._

He struggled to the edge of the bed and stood, staggered over to door and managed to palm the light switch and flick it on. He leaned against the doorframe, squeezed his eyes shut and slowly opened them against the light and the pounding in his head.

He blinked.

Sherlock Holmes was sprawled across the foot of his wet, blood-stained bed, chest rising and falling slowly, still wearing his coat and shoes.

John’s first instinct was to punch him. Because he was dead – because he _wasn’t_ dead. Because John had lost more than a year of his life mourning him, trying to pick up the pieces and move on, away from … whatever it was. Whatever they had had.

Adventure. Heady adrenaline rushes. Intrigue. The most brain-stimulating, mind-blowing, heart-stopping work he’d ever had.

Work? 

It didn’t seem like work, did it? Not with someone like Sherlock. 

But not just the best _work_. The best friend. The best partner. The all around best relationship he’d ever had in his life. 

He took a deep breath. Sherlock Holmes was alive. He hadn’t died when he’d jumped - _if_ he’d jumped. 

He stared at Sherlock. They had both been bleeding last night – but there was more than a bit of blood on the sheets near Sherlock’s head.

_Dead men don’t bleed._

He stumbled toward the bed, dropping to his knees and pulling back Sherlock’s eyelid with one hand while feeling his carotid pulse with the other. His practiced hand moved around to the back of the head, feeling the swelling, checking the wound with his fingers. Sherlock winced and tried to move away.

“’m fine…”

“You’re not fine.”John’s voice was terse. “You’re far from fine. Lie still.” He pressed gently around the wound, feeling the edges. The damn thing was bleeding again, and needed to be stitched. 

“You need stitches,” he said. In the face of this resurrection, he was unaccountably angry. “Why did you let me sleep? You could have bled to death.” He was examining Sherlock’s nose now. Bruised, badly, but not broken. 

Sherlock winced as John worked. John had done this before – more times than he remembered. His fingers mapped the contours of this face instinctively, checking for damage.

“I didn’t _let _you fall asleep. You did that quite on your own.”__

__“Well, I suppose you dying wouldn’t have mattered as you’re already dead.”_ _

__“John…”_ _

__John jerked his head up, grimacing as his equilibrium shifted and his head throbbed. “No. I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is. Whatever excuse.”_ _

__Sherlock grabbed his wrist._ _

__“I’m not the only one who’s supposed to be dead!” He was surprisingly strong for someone who had lost so much blood. “ _You_ died more than a month ago. Pancreatic cancer. I read it in the London papers. You donated your body to science…there wasn’t even a funeral…” His voice was shaky. It trailed off and he pushed John away._ _

__John stared at Sherlock. He remembered this now – from just after they fought, after the table had collapsed and the laptop had fallen. Sherlock’s shock at seeing him. His nearly giddy relief that John was alive. He had been too awash in his own shock then to puzzle it out. Who would report that John was dead? When he was self-exiled out here with no phone and his sister – the only person who knew where he was and how to get hold of him in an emergency – was in her own hellish exile, drying out again at a high-end treatment center?_ _

__“Well, that news didn’t make it here,” John said at last. “I’ve been here two months trying to ‘work through my grief’ by writing a memoir of my time with _you_. My _grief_ counselor obviously didn’t think you’d show up here when she suggested it!” He broke his gaze away from Sherlock’s. There was something there –in his eyes – something he’d have understood in someone else’s eyes, but not in Sherlock’s. He reached down for a roll of gauze on the floor from the spilled medkit and began wrapping it around Sherlock’s head. The bandaging job was less than professional with his swollen, clumsy hand. And Sherlock was a mess. His hair was sweaty and matted with blood. He needed to be cleaned up, but John didn’t have the energy by half. And Sherlock wasn’t making it easier, refusing to lie still. Wanting to _talk_. _ _

__“I thought you said I need stitches.”_ _

__“You do. But I’m not steady enough to do them so you’re going to have to go to the clinic in the village. And it would be nice not to have you bleeding all over everything on the way.”_ _

__“No, John.” Sherlock’s voice was decisive. “No clinic. I shouldn’t have even come here. A clinic is out of the question.”_ _

__John pursed his lips. The throbbing in the back of his head was warring with the pounding in the front of it. He pulled aggressively on the gauze bandage to tighten it and tucked the loose end under._ _

__“Need to ice this hand,” he said, pretending he hadn’t even heard Sherlock. He stood, swayed, grabbed at the chest of drawers, cursed under his breath. This was utterly ridiculous. Between the two of them, they had half a capable body at best._ _

__“Let me.”_ _

__Five minutes later, they were sprawled side by side on top of a clean blanket John had managed to spread over the mess on the bed. John’s hand was resting on the bed between them, thrust inside a plastic bag full of ice. He was resolutely staring at the ceiling, trying hard to stay awake. The ice was helping. Sherlock was holding his own homemade ice pack over his face._ _

__“Alright,” said John. He was enjoying the numbing feeling of the ice. “Why won’t you go to the clinic?”_ _

__“I think you know,” answered Sherlock. His voice was muffled under the ice pack half covering his mouth._ _

__“Because you’re dead,” answered John._ _

__“Precisely,” answered Sherlock._ _

__“About that….”_ _

__“For all practical purposes, I am dead. I died…for a reason.” He paused to move the bag off of his mouth, resting it higher on his cheek against the side of his nose. He turned his head slightly, wincing. “You knowing that I am alive makes things…complicated.”_ _

__“But I’m dead too. Apparently. Pancreatic cancer, you said?”_ _

__“Yes. How could you not _know_ , John? Someone would have seen the obituary and the article that followed. Someone who knew you were here all along.” _ _

__John let out a breath. He stared at the ceiling through the very dim light of the very early morning._ _

__“Where have you been?” he asked at last. Sixteen months had passed since Sherlock jumped from the rooftop of St. Bart’s hospital. John had stayed in London for only three months, then had taken a job in Glasgow, and had begun seeing a grief counselor. He’d joined a grief support group, feeling awkward and out of sorts and unable to describe who it was, precisely, that he’d lost. He’d tried to get back into the army and had been roundly rejected – for his age, his previous injuries, his unstable psychological profile._ _

__He cut ties. He cut all ties. Everyone that he had known in London. That had known Sherlock._ _

__It seemed now, on this side of it, nearly impossible that Sherlock Holmes did not already know these things. That he did not know why no one from London would notify him that his obituary had run in the Sunday _Times_._ _

__“Where have I been?” Sherlock repeated. He shrugged. “Everywhere. Hong Kong. Los Angeles. Managua. Melbourne. Cairo. Montreal.”_ _

__“Everywhere but London,” said John. The cobwebs on the ceiling reminded him of a map of the London Underground. He followed what he took to be the Central line. He squeezed his eyes shut. He had to be hallucinating._ _

__“I’ve cut ties,” he said, when Sherlock remained silent. “With everyone. More than a year ago.”_ _

__“And Harry?”_ _

__“Rehab – again. Private center. Very expensive. She’s been there for three months.”_ _

__“Ah.”_ _

__“So – they all think I’m dead, then? Lestrade? Mycroft? Mrs. Hudson?”_ _

__“I would expect so. If they saw the obituary. Convenient you leaving your body to science.”_ _

__“Convenient you not really being dead.”_ _

__He just couldn’t get over that piece._ _

__Sherlock lay very still. John let his eyes close._ _

__“John?”_ _

__John slowly opened his eyes again._ _

__“John, you being dead – well, it changes things.”_ _

__John turned his head toward Sherlock, just enough to make out his shadowed, bearded profile._ _

__“Go on,” he said. He felt unreasonably calm lying here beside Sherlock, given that Sherlock was supposed to be dead and that he had recently found out he was supposed to be dead too. Given that they were lying beside each other on his bed. That was new. Given that they had beaten the bloody pulp out of each other only hours ago._ _

__“There are certain…advantages…to being dead. Advantages that will work even more in our favor if you choose to remain dead for a while longer.”_ _

__“I’m aware of the advantages,” said John. “I won’t have to go to Mycroft’s Christmas party.”_ _

__“It’s too soon for more Oxycontin, isn’t it?”_ _

__“Yes.” John left no room for argument. “Besides, you’ll need it in a couple hours when I stitch up your head.”_ _

__“Hmm.”_ _

__John’s medical intuition seemed to come in waves. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said a few moments later when he’d managed to keep his eyes open again by tracing the Piccadilly line in the cobwebs above. “You need fluids. I’ve orange juice, I think.”_ _

__“I don’t suppose you have pomegranate.”_ _

__The smile that stretched his lips and pulled at the corner of his eyes felt odd on his face. Two smiles in such a short time. He hadn’t smiled much this past year._ _

__“No, I don’t suppose I do.”_ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is passing his days holed up in a seaside cottage working through his grief by writing a memoir of his time with Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes, meanwhile, back in London, believes the obituary in the _Times_ reporting that Afghanistan veteran Dr. John Holmes has died. Sherlock seeks temporary refuge in his childhood vacation home – not knowing that Mycroft has gifted the little cottage on the sea to John. When the two dead men confront each other, the secrets they’ve been keeping have no place to hide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : Not mine, never were, never will be. No profit is being made from this amateur work.
> 
>  **A/N** : While this story is complete with this chapter, there may be a Part 2 in the future.

-2-

It was an awkward position at best.

Sherlock sitting sideways on the commode, arms folded on the vanity, head resting on his arms.

John worked with scissors first, then the razor. He’d let himself sleep an hour, forced himself awake when the alarm on Sherlock’s mobile sounded, checked his own pupil dilation, drank some tepid orange juice, then set the alarm to go off in another hour.

Did that three times, then took another pain pill and woke up Sherlock. His throat was somewhat better. The bruising, though, was just getting started.

Sherlock took two pills with his orange juice.

Once John had cut the hair away and shaved a fist-sized area, he cleaned the wound. Sherlock got through that with what seemed to be Lamaze-style breathing.

Sutures next. Not the best John had ever given, considering he’d never done them one-handed before. 

“This will leave a bad scar. The clinic….”

“I don’t mind a scar.”

“I don’t either. Next time I’m presented with your body, I’ll have a distinguishing feature to look for.” He awkwardly knotted the suture, using a swollen right pinky to hold it in place while he tugged with his left hand.

Sherlock remained resolutely still.

John was finding this entire process amazingly cathartic. He set up the next suture. “I’m only putting in as many as you absolutely need – about half what they’d give you at the clinic.”

Sherlock didn’t respond. John wondered if he’d fainted. It turned out he was biting his thumb against the pain. The bite wound almost required stitches too.

The bed was a lost cause so he helped settle Sherlock on the sofa and covered him with an afghan, the one Mrs. Hudson had given him when he left 221B. He then collapsed into his chair, his favorite luxury here – old and comfortable and over-sized and soft. He glanced around the room. The now three-legged table was on its side. Two of the chairs were down, one of them broken. His laptop – fuck. It looked alright – all in one piece, at least – but it wasn’t a rugged model, and had likely taken a fatal blow. His gun was on the floor where he’d dropped it. Useless thing, really, without bullets.

He glanced into the kitchen. The orange juice was on the counter. So was the bucket the ice maker dumped into. No ice, then, for the next round of cold compresses. They’d have to use the bags of frozen vegetables. 

He looked at his laptop again and almost – almost – got up to try turning it on.

It made him dizzy, though, thinking about standing. He pulled out the mobile again and set the alarm. Two hours. He’d sleep two hours.

He should have remembered just how little sleep Sherlock required. 

Perhaps it was because of the Oxycontin, or perhaps despite it. Maybe his head was throbbing so much from the suturing that he couldn’t sleep. Or perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps he’d kept himself awake, just on the edge of awareness, until John fell asleep, until he heard John’s uncomfortable snoring through his bruised nose and windpipe. As it was, John woke to the steady _beep beep beep_ of the alarm. He fumbled for the mobile and managed to quiet it, blinked away sleep, took a quick assessment of his head – still painful, but no worse – and focused on the figure on the sofa.

“What are you doing?” 

He knew perfectly well what Sherlock was doing.

“Reading.” 

Sherlock voice was not apologetic. He made no attempt to close the laptop, nor did he pretend to be doing anything other than what he was doing.

“Reading?” It was stupid, really, to question the obvious. He watched Sherlock’s eyes move over the words in front of him, and wondered how long he’d been reading, and how much of the document he’d finished.

“Do you mean to publish this?”

John had been watching him read for several minutes. Had watched Sherlock frown, and look thoughtful, and finally bite back a smile. He wanted very much to ask Sherlock what he was reading. 

“No. It was just for me,” he answered. 

Another minute passed. 

“You really shouldn’t be reading that,” he said quietly.

Sherlock raised his eyes and gave John that look.

That look that said “I have no idea what social norm I’m breaking now so kindly do explain.”

“It’s private. It’s not meant to be read by anyone but me.”

“Yet it’s about us.”

“It’s about _you_.”

Sherlock gave him a dismissive smile and continued reading.

John sighed and stood. Carefully. At least the laptop was functional. It was far too late to worry about what Sherlock had read. Sherlock ignored him until he started unwrapping the bandage around his head that covered the stitches.

“It’s only been two hours, John.” His eyes remained fixed on the monitor. John looked over his shoulder. The word “Mycroft” popped out at him. The entire page seemed to be peppered with the name.

John left the sutured cut uncovered and walked slowly into the kitchen, dropping onto one of the stools at the counter. He pushed the orange juice out of the way so he could see Sherlock, still bent over the laptop on the sofa. He looked back at the counter. There were three partially-eaten muffins on a plate and one empty muffin paper. He’d had a half dozen assortment from the bakery in town. Idly, he arranged the leftovers from largest to smallest. So, Sherlock had handily rejected the apple spice after one bite. He’d liked the pumpkin enough to try a second bite and had eaten nearly half of the carrot and walnut before hitting the cream-cheese filling, obviously rejecting it at that point. The empty wrapper appeared to be chocolate chip.

John finished the carrot walnut, skipped the pumpkin, and started on the apple spice. He was ravenous, but his throat protested the swallowing. He managed to find the milk in the fridge – not where it was supposed to be of course. He drained the carton into a pint glass.

He was amazed – truly amazed – that none of this bothered him. A dead man had broken into his home, nearly choked him to death, bled all over his bed, made a mess of his kitchen and was now reading his personal memoirs on his password-protected laptop. Come to think of it, the Word file was password-protected too.

He needed caffeine.

“Coffee or tea?” he asked. He knew the answer, of course, but everything was different now, despite it being all the same.

“Sit down, John. You’re about to collapse. I’ll make the tea.”

That was different.

He closed the laptop as soon as he got his hands on it.

“I’ve already e-mailed it to myself,” Sherlock called out from the kitchen.

“You can’t have. No wireless here. No internet at all, actually.”

“Used my mobile as a hot spot.”

John stared at the closed laptop, thinking about what exactly Sherlock had read. He’d started with a rather stream-of-consciousness brain dump but had organized it into coherent, logical chapters. He wasn’t a bad writer, all in all, and his brain was given to hospital corners and alphabetized spices in the spice rack. He’s sorted the initial jumble out in his third week of writing. 

It was a memoir of their time together, not a treatise on John’s life, or on Sherlock’s. But it was told from John’s perspective, of course, and offered the reader – John…it had only ever been intended for his eyes – not a painting of Sherlock, not a portrait, but a sculpture. Three-dimensional. Interpretive, out of proportion. Sherlock not on a pedestal but at ground-level, eye-to-eye with the observer.

He wouldn’t be embarrassed about it. He’d thought Sherlock dead. He’d reordered his entire life those last years around Sherlock Holmes.

He’d never been – happier? Perhaps.

More alive.

He’d definitely never _felt_ so much. Even now he had to admit to himself that the pain of that bullet piercing him in Afghanistan was a bee sting, a mere slap on the face, compared to watching Sherlock fall.

Sherlock handed him his tea – pressed it into his left hand, in fact, avoiding the mess of his right. He sat back on the sofa – on the middle cushion this time – and placed his own mug on the table, glancing at the laptop with an odd, thoughtful look. John wondered if he’d keep the beard. It looked odd on him, but he liked it. It drew a solid line between the old Sherlock and this one.

“Finish your tea. Then I’ve a few things to tell you.”

He sipped the tea. Hot and strong and barely sweet. 

He slipped into consulting physician mode as Sherlock spoke. Listened with a clinical, analytical mind. Explanations of Moriarty’s web, and what was already done, and what was left to do, and how it was back in London now, with Scotland Yard again. 

If he had known Sherlock had faked his death, he may have figured it out on his own. What Sherlock was protecting. _Who_ he was protecting. 

“But you’ve managed to trump it all up, haven’t you?” Sherlock laughed. “Look at you, John. They all think you’re dead. Dead! And if they keep thinking you’re dead for another month or two, that might be all the time we need. And you don’t need to be protected, because….”

“Because I’m dead,” John supplied helpfully, smiling, in spite of himself, at Sherlock’s growing excitement.

“Precisely! Because you’re dead, so you may as well be helpful. You’ll need a disguise of course, a better one than mine, because if Lestrade or any of them get a glimpse of us together…. How do you feel about women?”

 _What the …?_ Sherlock _knew_ he liked women. Or had. He hadn’t liked much of anything this past year, except thinking about Sherlock, painful as that was.

“What does that have to do with anything?” John couldn’t help glancing nervously at the laptop.

Sherlock followed his gaze. He stared at the laptop curiously, then back at John. John was getting oddly attached to the bearded, swollen, bruised face with Sherlock’s bright eyes staring out of it.

“How do you feel about _disguising_ yourself as a woman?” he asked, speaking slowly. “It would be the only thing that would work, really. You’re so much shorter already, and…”

“Elevator shoes. I can get three inches at least with the right shoes.”

Fuck. What was _wrong _with him? He was going along with this insanity far too easily.__

__“Or we could hide your height by putting you in a wheelchair….”_ _

__“A wheelchair, Sherlock? Are you planning to lift me into the cab then fold it up and put it in the boot every time we need to go somewhere?”_ _

__They stared at each other._ _

__John shook his head, a fond, familiar gesture._ _

__“How about a woman in a wheelchair?”_ _

__And they were laughing. It was the best sound John had heard in a year. Sherlock’s laughter mingling with his own. It hurt to laugh. His face hurt. His throat hurt. His head hurt. No matter – it was the best he had _felt_ in a year. He wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his swollen hand. Tears of mirth that threatened to become tears of relief, of joy._ _

__“Come over here, John. I’d like to show you something.” Sherlock scooted to the end of the sofa, clearing the spot in the middle, the spot in front of the laptop._ _

__He had his mobile in his hand as John sank onto the cushions. He was suddenly more tentative than he had been, less sure of himself. His long fingers grazed over the surface, flicking through a series of screens._ _

__“I’ve a memoir of my own, of sorts,” he said, staring at the mobile, then handing it to John. “It’s only fair, I think, to share it, considering.”_ _

__He sat very quietly as John stared at the mobile, then flicked his thumb sideways, again and again and again._ _

__Photograph after photograph. Of John._ _

__A few he remembered – posing with the blasted skull. Threatening Sherlock, holding the bow of his violin like a sword. Arm around Molly, holding two fingers behind her head like rabbit ears._ _

__Most he did not._ _

__Sleeping in his chair in 221B._ _

__In profile, watching television on the sofa with his knees drawn up._ _

__Standing beside Lestrade with a puzzled look on his face._ _

__Standing beside Lestrade looking annoyed._ _

__At his laptop, blogging._ _

__Arguing with Mycroft._ _

__Sitting on a bench in the park – the one where they always met if John didn’t have time to go home after work - eating an apple._ _

__Sitting on the same bench reading the paper._ _

__Same bench…drinking coffee._ _

__Sleeping, shirtless, on his back, arm up around his head. In his own bed, back at 221B._ _

__He stared at that last photo for some time. He didn’t have to ask what it meant. What any of it meant._ _

__He took a deep breath, released it slowly._ _

__“We’re always going to remember our first kiss, you know,” he said. He placed the mobile on top of the laptop and considered the two devices. “Because it’s going to hurt like hell.”_ _

__But Sherlock was already pulling John toward him, hand on the back of John’s neck, and John was careful to avoid Sherlock’s nose, and marveled that swollen, bruised lips could taste so sweet. And it did hurt, that kiss, and the next, and Sherlock’s hand in his hair and his fingers on the back of his head where they’d pounded him against the tile floor the night before, but soft now, light. And it was awkward, and heady, and John moved to straddle Sherlock’s too-thin frame, and lowered himself onto Sherlock’s thighs._ _

__He laughed as Sherlock winced, and buried his head in the crook of Sherlock’s neck._ _

__“Oh God. I kneed you in the groin last night. Twice.” He lifted himself off Sherlock’s lap, settling down on the sofa beside him. Sherlock reached over for this hand, and John took it, and squeezed Sherlock’s fingers._ _

__Sherlock lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed John’s knuckles._ _

__“We have all the time in the world,” he said, dropping their hands into his lap._ _

__“Right. Seeing as we’re both dead,” said John, resting his head against the back of the sofa._ _

__“It takes some getting used to,” sad Sherlock, rubbing his thumb over John’s palm._ _

__John squeezed his hand and sighed. He closed his eyes and burrowed down against Sherlock’s bony shoulder._ _

__Sherlock waited until he was gently snoring before reaching for the laptop._ _

___Fin_ _ _


End file.
